


Game Night

by Odyle



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: Gen, Saturnalia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:17:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odyle/pseuds/Odyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Penny didn’t know exactly what constituted winning at Life, but Sheldon was going for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Game Night

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for [](http://ilikethequiet.livejournal.com/profile)[**ilikethequiet**](http://ilikethequiet.livejournal.com/) for [](http://community.livejournal.com/sheldon_penny/profile)[**sheldon_penny**](http://community.livejournal.com/sheldon_penny/)'s Saturnalia 2010. Thank you as always to [](http://damalur.livejournal.com/profile)[**damalur**](http://damalur.livejournal.com/) for making this junk readable.

The lights had come back on half an hour before, but Sheldon refused to go home until they had finished the game. The only board game he allowed himself to leave unfinished was Risk and that was only after extensive photography of all player positions.

He was playing to win. Penny didn’t know exactly what constituted winning at Life, but Sheldon was going for it. Whatever goodwill she’d won by saving him from the dark when the electricity had gone out had been used up by her quick rise to wealth while he struggled to pay off the school loans he’d accrued in the first few turns. While Penny had at least four houses, Sheldon still rented an apartment and was miserly with his money. He was still trying to pay back his student loans many turns after college.

Penny had rescued him from his apartment--the real one, not the one he occupied in the game . It seemed that the one emergency Sheldon hadn’t properly prepared for was a blackout. Leonard was out and it had been up to Penny to save Sheldon from wandering around, bumping in to furniture in the dark. He claimed to have been startled by the sudden electricity deprivation as she led him across the hall to her apartment, and Penny tried her hardest not to laugh at him.

“Penny?”

“Yes, Sheldon?”

He looked down at the pink plastic van she was moving up the board. She’d filled it up half way across the board, but Penny had lost all but two of the vans, so the rest of the pegs that should have gone in it were left to lay on the board. Each time she had to move the van along, Penny would come back to push her pegs along. She had to brush them off her fingers when they stuck. Sheldon had told her that was no way to treat children, and Penny reminded him that Sheldon had abandoned his child pegs soon after they were born, shoving them back in the bag and declaring that they’d been put up for adoption.

“Don’t you ever doubt your choice of occupation?” Sheldon asked.

Penny leaned over to spin the wheel.

“Not really. Pro-sports star is pretty much the sweetest gig in this game.”

“I mean your choice to pursue acting or rather --let’s face it-- waitressing professionally.”

“I’m doing perfectly fine.”

“Penny, playing bar goer number six on _How I Met Your Mother_ does not qualify as a career. This isn’t Canada.”

She handed Sheldon another loan card, which he grimaced at, but laid out next to his money. Penny was faintly glad that she had lost the rules booklet for the game long ago and that Sheldon had never played it before. He was quick to inform her that his family was “Uno people”. He had spent hours playing it with his sister and brother in the back of their parents van while they waited in traffic, evacuating inland from hurricanes. Years and years of playing Uno had sharpened his skills to the point where Missy only beat him sometimes (though their mom always beat them all if she was inclined to play. He had yet to figure out how she had managed this).

“It paid the bills.”

“Which bill did it pay, Penny?”

“Half of my water bill.”

Sheldon frowned, though it might have been from having to hand over another two thousand to Penny for a hospital bill.

“I don’t even care that it doesn’t pay that much,” Penny said. She had to sort through all of the money before she could find the pile of five hundred dollar bills. Somehow, they had made it to the bottom, while the hundred dollar bills had been on top.

“I care. I would be quite happy to have you not syphoning off our bandwidth anymore.”

“So your porn downloads slower,” Penny said.

As she looked at the piles of money before her, Penny realized that she had probably put Sheldon’s hospital bill payment in the pile of her own money. It didn’t matter. The bank was down to less than her own net worth. She might have to write dollar amounts on post-it notes and listen to Sheldon complain about the Weimar Republic.

“Penny, I consider you a friend. If I recall correctly, friends are supposed to be concerned for their friend’s welfare and, although I am certainly not one to object to constancy, the thought of going to the Cheesecake Factory in twenty year’s time for my weekly dinner there and being offered a menu by you is disturbing.”

“Come on, Sheldon. In twenty years I’ll have at least made manager.”

“I believe you have missed the point. Let me rephrase--”

“I get it, Sheldon. I get it. You think that acting is a waste of my time and that I’m going to be stuck waitressing for the rest of my life.”

Penny twisted the spinner back and forth a few times before she committed, giving it a hard spin. It jumped off of the balance point, but settled back to provide her with a four and another child. Hopefully they wouldn’t all want to go to college.

“And that it would disappoint me for you to still be working at the Cheesecake Factory long after I’ve won my Nobel. I don’t know that I could ‘hang out’ with you anymore.”

“How kind of you. Look, Sheldon. Waitressing isn’t forever. I’m young and stupid. Eventually I’ll get my big break acting or I won’t. I’m only twenty-two.”

“I’ve seen your driver’s license, Penny.”

“Twenty-four. The point is that I have time to be young and stupid. I’m not going to win a Nobel prize or cure cancer, so what’s wrong with me spending my twenties going after something I want to do?”

When she called home, she got the same question from her parents. _When are you coming home to start your life?_ it seemed like her mother was asking each time she asked if Penny had gotten any roles. _You can’t possibly be happy waiting tables and failing at your dreams_.

“Penny, I would think you would have realized by now that no one is seeking your acting skills. Although you are attractive by society’s standards, your acting skills are on a scale of John Wayne to Patrick Stewart are at most a Keanu Reeves.”

Penny stared at him blankly as he dropped another child on to her pile.

“Just because I’m not _good_ at it doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy acting.”

“You continue to pursue a career in acting, that you agree is unrealistic, because you enjoy it?”

“Not everything is about succeeding, Sheldon. I enjoy what I do. I enjoy getting dressed up for auditions. I enjoy meeting lots of people and seeing really cute kids at work. I enjoy reading really stupid dialogs. I enjoy getting free food. And, as much as I hate to admit it, I like hanging out with you guys. I couldn’t do that stuff if I was a _real_ actress with a career.”

Sheldon looked away from her, suddenly much more intent on the board. They were both approaching retirement. Penny had enough child pegs to fill two and a half vans. Sheldon had a pink peg in the driver’s seat next to his blue peg, but otherwise his vehicle was empty. All of his cast off children were in a pile to the left of what was probably the bank.

Sheldon was not much better at the board game version of life than he was at the real one. It was all a matter of luck, which seemed to have started frustrating Sheldon when she held out the college career cards face down and told him that he would have to pick one at random. Penny felt sort of bad for the little pegs in her van. There was no way to strategize beyond the benefits of a college career versus a high school career. Everything depended on the little plastic turner which didn’t like to balance correctly any more and tended to fall on five.

It was possible that this was a bit too much like real life.

“My meemaw always told me that some people live to work and others work to live, and that you can’t judge people for picking either one. Your choice of acting and subsequent theft of our internet connection sounds suspiciously like the latter. While living to work is obviously superior, there must be some merit in working to live.”

“Thank you, Sheldon. Your meemaw sounds like a wise lady.”

“Understand that we will revisit this conversation when you turn thirty contingent on your success as an actress, which is at this point unlikely, but stranger things have happened. Although you should note that flattery of my meemaw will get you nowhere. Besides, meemaw doesn’t like thieves.”

Penny rolled her eyes and fanned herself with a wad of her money.


End file.
